4 ms·

4chan and 8chan are cancers upon the internet. The sites themselves and their community members spew toxicity, hate, cynicism, and revulsion wherever they turn

by Ameo 7y ago

4chan and 8chan are cancers upon the internet. The sites themselves and their community members spew toxicity, hate, cynicism, and revulsion wherever they turn up. They revel in trolling, harassment, and offense for the sake of offense. This, as recent events demonstrate, often extends further into deep-seated hatred and racism. I don't know if it's an intrinsic side effect of the 100% anonymous culture or just just the way they developed over time, but there's no denying that they serve as a perfect breeding ground for this kind of indoctrination and degeneration. They're perfect feedback loops - the more time one spends in such places, the more strongly the mindsets they proclaim become rooted and the harder it is to break away. People go in feeling alienated and rejected and stay stuck there, finding a perverse connection in their inability to connect and interact with the rest of society in a positive manner. As a result of fixating on the things that set them apart and consuming endless torrents of content from people similarly afflicted, it makes it even harder for them to escape the feedback loop. Mental illness is rampant among the users there, and instead of people afflicted with it being helped or guided into acceptable patterns of interaction, they're mocked or worse yet praised for the negative behavior they exhibit. I've seen this happen to several friends first-hand. One of the most dangerous and destructive things that I've noticed is a disconnection between ideas and reality that comes out of a broken concept of "irony." A common claim is that people started these communities as places where they would "ironically" pretend to be racist or mentally ill, and as a result they attracted actually racist and mentally ill people who ended up taking over the community from within. I think things go a step further: that people who "ironically" take part in hate speech, homophobia, and other bigoted belief systems end up slipping into believing them themselves. Or rather, the line between irony and reality itself dissolves over time after constant exposure, often at the exclusion of all else. I don't have any ideas for solutions to the problems that these kinds of communities create. Their very design makes eliminating the issues or cutting out bad actors completely next to impossible, and no amount of cleanup work after the fact is going to eliminate what is clearly a deeply-rooted and persistent system. Any attempts to exemplify the sickness of their community will be seen as attacks and just make their beliefs deeper.

ardani 7y ago
Not your Internet, not your community and not your problem. If you say school shootings are your problem, well... Talk to your neighbors, talk to your friends, talk to your family, talk to your children. School shootings are an IRL local community problem. The reason the chans turn so cancerous, is that these people's environments are extremely cancerous to them. To fight this, they concentrate where there's the most (ideo)logical cancer, so they can build mental resistance, learn to recognize the patterns and eventually solve them. I'm not saying they plan this out consciously, but that's how it works out. Best I can tell these people would love to chop wood all days if they'd then be left alone with access to a computer in their free time. To give you an example of what I mean by a "carcinogenic environment" - the "you must go to university before working"-meme. That piece of shit took multiple years out of my life. That's a much more problematic meme than the ones that are shared on 4chan. Chan users are in a deadlock situation where their environment pushes more and more unwanted information on them. They are basically told to get cancer and die by their IRL communities - which, in part, is why they gravitate towards anti-Semitism, the single most effective means of closing down the heart. It's not a pleasant experience but it's a way to survive. Then the literal IDF comes around to shill their communities. Oh, that's nice! That surely won't increase anti-Semitism! Then the FBI, CIA, KGB pile on. "Investigate Russia! We're totally not the CIA!". "Pls post cheese pizza, I'm not FBI I promise sempai". "US govt. corrupt Jewish snakepit! You will die by the sandnigger and the blistering faggot! xo - putin". Now the government is regularly turning up to dump its toxic baggage on the chans. Thanks! --- So, to clear something up, anti-Semitism is totally predictable and caused by Jews: https://laitman.com/2019/08/what-is-the-root-of-all-arab-and-nazi-hate-for-jews-quora/ https://laitman.com/2019/08/what-is-the-root-of-all-arab-and... Good news everyone! Jews are not victims, they have responsibilities and they just have to act on it. You can call Laitman a cult leader or a monk farmer or whatever, but he is studied, he knows his Torah, his Kabbalah and his Talmud, and he is correct. The children of Israel can never truly be victims of anyone but themselves. Talmud 101. Of course, the Talmud also says "don't share this with the gentiles"; well, the tech world is in my heart and Hacker News is a Jewy bunch, so it seems I won't even have to do any Teshuvah for sharing this here. So: can the anti-anti-Semitism meme die already? Chan users know that anti-Semitism is "correct" instinctively. It's hard to avoid when you have the experiential knowledge, but of course it's still possible to mislabel it, e.g. as a different category of "correct", such as "all Jews must die" - no, Jews need to love their neighbor as themselves spiritually as well as physically, and not have the hubris to think that what they think does not matter as long as they do Torah and Mitzvot on a surface level. I'm saying this based on Hebrew, Torah and Kabbalah study. Please weight your words if you choose to respond. --- Posters like parent are framed as just another uninspired Zionist shill; it's not incorrect. Parent contains absolutely zero useful information or empathy for chan users. It's a shallow attempt to demoralize the community by painting a bleak future for it, or to dehumanize them so more people from the tech-o-sphere will start shilling there. You can't speak truthfully with someone who you consider to be the embodiment of a disease. "Treat thy neighbor as thyself" already.

by Ameo 7y ago

ardani 7y ago

Not your Internet, not your community and not your problem. If you say school shootings are your problem, well... Talk to your neighbors, talk to your friends, talk to your family, talk to your children. School shootings are an IRL local community problem. The reason the chans turn so cancerous, is that these people's environments are extremely cancerous to them. To fight this, they concentrate where there's the most (ideo)logical cancer, so they can build mental resistance, learn to recognize the patterns and eventually solve them. I'm not saying they plan this out consciously, but that's how it works out. Best I can tell these people would love to chop wood all days if they'd then be left alone with access to a computer in their free time. To give you an example of what I mean by a "carcinogenic environment" - the "you must go to university before working"-meme. That piece of shit took multiple years out of my life. That's a much more problematic meme than the ones that are shared on 4chan. Chan users are in a deadlock situation where their environment pushes more and more unwanted information on them. They are basically told to get cancer and die by their IRL communities - which, in part, is why they gravitate towards anti-Semitism, the single most effective means of closing down the heart. It's not a pleasant experience but it's a way to survive. Then the literal IDF comes around to shill their communities. Oh, that's nice! That surely won't increase anti-Semitism! Then the FBI, CIA, KGB pile on. "Investigate Russia! We're totally not the CIA!". "Pls post cheese pizza, I'm not FBI I promise sempai". "US govt. corrupt Jewish snakepit! You will die by the sandnigger and the blistering faggot! xo - putin". Now the government is regularly turning up to dump its toxic baggage on the chans. Thanks! --- So, to clear something up, anti-Semitism is totally predictable and caused by Jews: https://laitman.com/2019/08/what-is-the-root-of-all-arab-and-nazi-hate-for-jews-quora/ https://laitman.com/2019/08/what-is-the-root-of-all-arab-and... Good news everyone! Jews are not victims, they have responsibilities and they just have to act on it. You can call Laitman a cult leader or a monk farmer or whatever, but he is studied, he knows his Torah, his Kabbalah and his Talmud, and he is correct. The children of Israel can never truly be victims of anyone but themselves. Talmud 101. Of course, the Talmud also says "don't share this with the gentiles"; well, the tech world is in my heart and Hacker News is a Jewy bunch, so it seems I won't even have to do any Teshuvah for sharing this here. So: can the anti-anti-Semitism meme die already? Chan users know that anti-Semitism is "correct" instinctively. It's hard to avoid when you have the experiential knowledge, but of course it's still possible to mislabel it, e.g. as a different category of "correct", such as "all Jews must die" - no, Jews need to love their neighbor as themselves spiritually as well as physically, and not have the hubris to think that what they think does not matter as long as they do Torah and Mitzvot on a surface level. I'm saying this based on Hebrew, Torah and Kabbalah study. Please weight your words if you choose to respond. --- Posters like parent are framed as just another uninspired Zionist shill; it's not incorrect. Parent contains absolutely zero useful information or empathy for chan users. It's a shallow attempt to demoralize the community by painting a bleak future for it, or to dehumanize them so more people from the tech-o-sphere will start shilling there. You can't speak truthfully with someone who you consider to be the embodiment of a disease. "Treat thy neighbor as thyself" already.